


3.14159

by twicky



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Food, Forced Overeating, Gen, reality television
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 06:37:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5037712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twicky/pseuds/twicky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara receives an unexpected phone call from the Doctor one day. "Clara," he rasps, "This is it, I'm afraid. I wanted to hear your voice one last time before I go. Don’t know what I’ll regenerate into this time. Promise me you won’t abandon me if I end up ginger.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	3.14159

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sorry, I have no idea what this is, or why I wrote it.
> 
> Rating/warnings: Suitable for all audiences, I suppose. Contains scenes of food over-consumption and its aftermath, so if that sort of thing puts you off, you know: reader discretion is advised.
> 
> Inspired by something Peter Capaldi said at Comic Con about the Doctor being locked in a room, and the only way to escape was by…well, you’ll just have to read on.

She receives a call from him during class one day. He almost never phones her during the downtime between their travels (”I’ve got better things to do; important  _Time Lord_  things. And anyway, cellular wreaks havoc with the TARDIS’ navigation system.”), so she mutters an apology to her students, shushes the giggling girls at the back, and goes into the hallway to take the call.

“This had better be important, Doctor. What did I say about mobile phones during school hours? The students gossip enough about my social life as it is.”

Silence over the faint buzz of the phone’s connection, then - the sound of heavy, laboured breathing.

“Hellooo…Doctor, is this a prank call? If you don’t start talking soon, I’m hanging up. Now!”

“No, Clara, don’t…it’s me…”

“Yes, I know it’s you, why are you calling me?”

“Clara, this is it, I’m afraid. It’s all about to be over. I wanted to hear your voice one last time before I go. Don’t know what I’ll regenerate into this time round. Promise me you won’t abandon me if I end up ginger.”

Clara tries to quell the dread rising within her. “Not funny, Doctor. Not funny at all. No one’s regenerating around here, not on my watch. Now explain what on Earth is happening.”

A few more pained-sounding breaths. Then - 

“Goodbye, Clara. I’ve parked the TARDIS in your bedroom. Don’t know if I’ll be able to fly her anytime soon after I change. It’s been a short but good one in this body. Don’t forget me. Not even if I turn out to be ginger.” 

The line goes dead. Clara, now in full panic mode, runs back into the classroom to grab her bag and make barely coherent excuses at the students (”sorry, family emergency, a sub’ll be in shortly.”) And then she’s racing towards her motorcycle, the only thought in her head being that she  _must_  get to the Doctor before whatever misfortune had befallen him takes him away from her for good. That she, his Impossible Girl, was born to save the Doctor. And so she shall.

_Hang in there, Doctor. I’m coming for you!_

A ten minute ride later (red lights be damned, this was life and death), and she arrives outside her apartment. She kills the engine, and makes her way upstairs, feeling altogether detached from her body. And there the TARDIS is, blocking the entrance to her bedroom. Good ol’ Doctor, determined to his last breath to have one last go at annoying her. Oh god, he’ll never annoy her again. Just when they’d fallen into an easy sort of comfort around each other, the banter becoming less barbed and the touching more frequent and deliberate (”I’m still against the hugging, but I guess a little hand-holding won’t hurt”), he's gone and gotten himself killed. What will this new face be like? Ginger was the least of her worries. What if something goes wrong, and he ends up ditching her to go gallivanting off with that blasted Missy instead?

The TARDIS’ doors open on their own ( _no, no, no, even the Old Girl knows this is serious, he must really be_  that _badly off_ ), and Clara steps inside cautiously, cognizant that whatever's attacked the Doctor may still be on the loose. Hmm, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. No smoke…no frantically sounding alarms…nary a Cyberman or Dalek in sight.

“Ughhhhhhhhh…”

Clara rushes over to the figure lying supine by the side of the console. It was the Doctor, and thank the heavens it was still  _him_ , in all of his grey-haired, attack-eyebrow’d glory. His eyes are closed, and there is a faint sheen of sweat over his pale (well, even paler-than-usual) countenance. He’s taking laboured, gasping breaths through his mouth, and Clara can see his neck muscles contracting and his Adam’s apple bob with each in-drawing of air.

“Oh, _Doctor_.” Clara whispers, tears springing to her eyes. Who, or what, could have done this to him?

The Time Lord’s eyes blink open slowly, and flutter shut again.

“No, no, no, no, don’t you dare leave me. I’m here. Your Clara’s here. Just open your eyes and tell me what’s wrong, how do I fix this - oh god, I don’t want to lose you again!” Clara, in her frenzied grief, throws herself on top of the Doctor and clutches at him with all her might.

_UUUUURPPPP._

At first Clara is confused as to the source of the noise, and it isn’t until the smell hits her that she realises.

“Oh my god Doctor, did you just  _burp_  in my face?”

The Doctor’s eyes are open now, and they gaze at her, though still slightly unfocused.

“Clara, so good of you to come. One last chance to see you before I go into the night. Come closer, so that your face may be the last thing this face sees, before another takes my place.”

Clara notes that colour seems to be returning to the Time Lord’s face, and he is breathing easier. And that there is no regeneration energy in sight. Rocking back to sit on the heels of her feet, she crosses her arms and stares down at him with her best Miss Oswald expression.

“Explain. Doctor.  _Now_.”

“So shrill! Don’t harp at me, woman. Give this dying man some dignity. Sing something. Maybe a gentle lullaby, to harken in a new dawn.”

“ _I ran right through two red lights_. Do you have any idea how much the fines are these days for an infringement like that?! Start talking  _now_ , or the only thing you’ll hear before you regenerate will be the sound of me hitting you with my shoe!”

The Doctor startles at that, and props himself up on his elbows ( _remarkably swiftly for a dying man_ , Clara notes to herself with a huff). His face turns a slight shade of green with the change in position, and he quickly lies back down.

“Okay, okay, obviously I haven’t died yet, but I can feel it coming. This is worse than that time a Dalek shot me straight through one of my hearts.  _Much_  worse. Worse than when I absorbed all that Time Vortex energy from Rose. Worse than when Jack took advantage of my intoxicated state, and shoved a - ”

“Doctor! I want a proper explanation! And make it quick.”

“You’re a terrible carer, you know that, right? Ow! All right, all right! For five days, or whatever duration of time that translates into on that planet, they had me locked in there. I could hear them the whole time, laughing through the speakers. Probably spying on me through the cameras on the roof. ‘ _Do it for the audience, Doctor!’_ They said. ‘ _We’ve never had a Time Lord take up the challenge before.’”_

“Okayyyy…what challenge?”

“I’m getting to that - god, you really know how to spoil the dramatic tension, don’t you? Ow! Okay, okay, not the hair, you leave the hair alone! So, I looked around, and there, on the table, were the  _pies_. All sorts of pies. Cream-filled pies. Chocolate pies. Pies filled with fruit of every imaginable description. All heaped up into a golden, crusty tower. And Clara, it was terrible. The people there were turned on by the sheer gluttony of what is to come. That, and the irony of seeing a man defeated by something as unassuming as  _pie_.”

“I still don’t understand…”

“They had me on a live stream, Clara! Possibly broadcasted to a studio audience, all across the galaxy. I could hear them chanting through the speakers. ‘ _Eat the pie! Eat the pie! Eat the pie!’_ And that was the challenge. I wasn’t to leave my prison until I'd finished all the pies.  _Do you know how many pies there were in that room, Clara?_ The first five or ten weren’t that bad. I varied it up, alternating the dairy-based with the fruit, throwing in a pecan one now and then for a change in texture. By the time I finished the fiftieth, I was only less than halfway through -”

“Hang on. You ate fifty pies. In one sitting.”

“Are you even listening to me?! I ploughed through fifty, then sixty, then what must have been one hundred pies. And still the pie tower persisted; a never-ending, latticed behemoth. I ate, and ate, and ate. Until suddenly, there was only one pie left. Every time I think it couldn’t get more extraordinary, it surprises me. It’s impossible. I hate it. it’s evil. It’s astonishing… _a single, banana cream pie_.”

“So did you finish it?”

“Aye. And with that last mouthful, the doors to the cell were thrown open. Two, scantily-clad women came in to help me up from the chair. They made me put on a shirt that read: “This guy’s sure got a lot of crust!” And then the  _organiser_  of this whole thing comes in, shakes my hand, and has a picture taken with me to hang in their ‘Hall of Fame’. Next thing I know, I’m lying in the TARDIS feeling like I’m about to birth a woolly mammoth…and so I called you. To say goodbye. No one survives birthing a woolly mammoth, not even a Time Lord.”

Clara can only stare at him in stunned silence.

The Doctor’s eyes are closed again, and his long, spindly fingers are clasped together loosely over his midsection. He looks so miserable and wretched that Clara forgets her prior vexation with him and moves to help him up from the ground.

“Come on, Doctor, let’s get you somewhere more comfortable. Admittedly I’ve never eaten a hundred pies in one go, but I have had my share of regrettable all-you-can-eat buffet encounters. And all I can say is that…you’ll just have to wait for it to pass. Hopefully the right way through, and not in reverse.”

The Doctor allows Clara to pull him up, and together they make their way to the Doctor’s bedroom, where Clara waits outside while the Doctor changes into his pyjamas. (Clara is amused to see once she heads in that they are printed all over with anthropomorphised pastries, but holds her tongue because, well, she’s got some decency left in her yet.) She tucks him into his bedspread and, suddenly overwhelmed with love and affection for this  _ridiculous_  man-child of a grey-haired stick insect, presses kisses all over his forehead, his nose, and then his chin. The Doctor, by virtue of his sugar-overloaded state or just because he is glad to have survived his trial by pie and now has his Impossible Girl by his side, accepts the kisses with minimal grumbling only.

“I’m so glad you’re not dying, Doctor.” Clara whispers, shifting to lie on her side next to him.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I made you run all those red lights.”

“It’s okay, we’ll just get Kate to erase the records if I made it onto the speed cameras.”

“Clever girl. Can I still have a lullaby, even though I’m not dying?”

“Whatever makes you feel better, Doctor.”


End file.
